Low mills’ quota not to hit sugar supply to PDS

kolkata: even as the levy quota of sugar mills has been brought down to 10 per cent from march ’02, it will have no immediate impact on the supply of sugar through public distribution system since the government has enough stock of levy sugar carried over from the previous year. although the sugar industry has offered 3.6 lakh tonnes as levy sugar to the government for the current quarter (april-june), the government has decided to release 6.5 lakh tonnes of sugar for distribution through pds, which is 18 per cent of the total sugar release of 36.2 lakh tonnes for the quarter. the additional 2.9 lakh tonnes of sugar which the government will pump into the pds in the current quarter, over and above the industry’s scheduled quota, will come from the last year’s levy sugar stock. the industry estimates that at least five lakh tonnes of sugar meant for the pds had not been lifted by states in the past year. this points to the fact that the centre still has enough stocks for servicing the pds, at least for the current year. the government has recently raised the sugar price by rs 0.25 to rs 13.50 per kg for distribution through pds, such a marginal price-hike will do little to pare down its subsidy bill on sugar, industry sources said. however, as the government is determined to prune its subsidy on sugar, speculation is rife among the industry that the subsidy on sugar meant for pds will not be more than re 1 to rs 1.50 per kg after decontrol of sugar in october. according to industry sources, the subsidy component in the current issue price of sugar meant for pds is worked out at rs 2.50 per kg.